How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lenin-mushroom-hoax-russia? <comment><USER3> I remember watching this "documentary" program on TV. Could not believe my eyes. It was one of the most exciting, paradigm-shattering experiences of my late childhood.

Central TV back then was the #2 authority, right after "Pravda". Anything shown or discussed on TV was "official", there was no room for bullshit on Soviet TV. And then, suddenly, comes this program, where Kuryokhin proves Lenin was a mushroom. Lenin's figure was so much mythologized (there were even few research institutes dedicated to Leninism) that nothing seemed impossible. A guy which looked like a scientist equipped with complex diagrams and talking about mushroomness of Lenin on central TV - at some point the "documentary" crossed certain level of craziness that it became believable.

No other modern art performance, before or since, left such a deep mark on my brain.

<comment><USER4> >at some point the "documentary" crossed certain level of craziness that it became believable.

Yes, you are nailing it down there. Before Goebbels, there was Pravda

<comment><USER5> This seems a reference to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie) . Well, I learnt (just now from that page) that the 'big lie' concept originated in _Mein Kampf_ \- Goebbels' later version was different. It seems Hitler's version that was meant here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is another angle to this story that the article misses. I think the _" Lenin was a Mushroom"_ story was satire on the many Lenin stories that Soviet PR used to paint him as a great guy. These stories, modern legends if you will, were sometimes so exaggerated that no one could possibly believe them - yet no one could say so publicly.

Here is one example[1]:

 _" One example, which all Russian people know by heart – Volodya Lenin was playing in the house and accidentally broke crystal graphene (crystal bottle for water or drinks). He was afraid that he would get punished, so he lied that he had nothing to do with this accident. But deep inside he was a good boy, so he felt bad about it. And several days later he told his relatives that it was him who broke the thing."_

 _" Lenin was a Mushroom"_ was just taking this to an extreme and that's why people in early 90s USSR found it funny.

[1] [https://understandrussia.com/lenin/](https://understandrussia.com/lenin/)

<comment><USER7> The "Lenin was a great man even in childhood" legend that I heard involves him eating apples that his mother told him not to, and then later his conscience nags him for it. In any event, Lenin was subjected to the same mythologization as George Washington who supposedly cut down a cherry tree and confessed to it.[1]

[1] [https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-e...](https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital- encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/)

<comment><USER6> I still think there is an important difference here that made the joke[1] work in the USSR. I believe it wouldn't have worked in the US the same way.

In America, when children grow up, parents could have that talk with them about how George Washington really was a great guy and how much they appreciate if their children wouldn't cut down the cherry tree in the garden but also about how this story about George Washington is just that - <USER2> story_.

I wasn't there at the time, so this is just my take on it: I imagine in the USSR it could have been dangerous to talk to children like that and one way out was to exaggerate the stories until the child notices what's going on. Now daddy Sergei Kurekhin was doing that to the whole Soviet Union - and that's why they laughed about it.

[1] I call it a joke and not a hoax, because I think hoax kind of misses the point. I wasn't there at the time but this is my opinion: I don't think anyone believed it, I think people didn't say so partly because they didn't want to destroy the joke and partly because this was still the USSR.

<comment><USER8> No, this is totally not how it was. People used to speak quite freely at home (aside from when Stalin was in power, and even then).

<comment><USER9> You can't speak freely at home when your little children hear you, because there is a risk they will repeat your words in public, which can get you in trouble. It's probably also quite dangerous with teenagers around; they may get a wrong idea about appearing cool to their peers by saying something that can't be say, and then get reported on.

First, you need to make sure your children understand the magnitude of danger from repeating what they heard at home. That requires some maturity and intelligence, but more importantly the idea that "there are important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place" is itself one of those important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place, so you either need to approach this very very carefully or take a risk and hope for the best.

<comment><USER8> Are you talking out of experience or just theorizing? Because I was there. People were telling Gorbachov & Reagan jokes all the time in their kitchens, that was just a normal part of life.

<comment><USER9> Experience. I was in the role of the teenager.

Yes, some jokes were okay, especially the toothless ones. Like, making a joke about being poorer or having worse quality of products than the West was relatively safer than making a joke about party members killing each other or hurting random people.

It also depended on who could hear you, and what kind of a job your parents had. The better job, the greater risk of losing your job for saying wrong stuff.

Also, "speak quite freely at home" is more than just jokes. I am pretty sure most people would not feel safe discussing The Gulag Archipelago at home.

<comment><USER8> Well, I was talking about jokes. I do agree that people were more careful about voicing serious dissent, but then who actually did that? A very small handful of political activists, the rest just never went there, because a) usually their friends and family already agreed with them about politics b) everyone felt powerless to change anything c) everyone was too preoccupied with survival in the tough Soviet reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Modern Russian TV is full of crazy hoaxes that people are quick to believe. The difference is that they are manufactured by the state at scale as part of its "hybrid warfare" campaigns (currently in Syria and Ukraine), as opposed to a lone prankster trolling people for fun. One could even say that Kurekhin's prank was a wildly successful POC.

<comment><USER11> My mother lost her mind recently. When I checked her youtube account, I found that it's full of these Russian hoaxes. She watched them extensively for last few years.

<comment><USER12> I don't know whether to believe you. Can you give an example?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > We don't have in Russia, _or in the West_ , a situation where there are > certain types of discourse or figures that are off limits for critical, > ironic investigation.

The linguistic anthropologist cited in the article is wrong about at least one thing.

<comment><USER12> Who is off limits?

<comment><USER14> anything diversity-related

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article doesn't do justice to the hilarious reference to the wave-particle duality that Kuryohin makes when he equates mushrooms to radio waves. This is the part that still makes me giggle when I recall this prank.

<comment><USER15> "Lenin was a mushroom _and_ a radio wave."

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that is the only place where waves are mentioned. I don't know whether the author of the article even realized that was a reference to the wave- particle duality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Haha that's awesome! Part I: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU)

As a kid I read a book which seriously made the case that Jesus was a magic mushroom - the English archaeologist and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John M Allegro's _The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross_ (1970)

"Allegro's book _The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross_ (1970) argued...that stories of early Christianity originated in an Essene clandestine cult centred around the use of Psilocybin mushroom, and that the New Testament is the coded record of this shamanistic cult. ...that the authors of the Christian gospels did not understand the Essene thought..[that] the Christian tradition is based on a misunderstanding of the scrolls. ...that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient 'sex-and-mushroom' cult."[0]

Well, I learnt since that Santa Claus is a mushroom myth[1], and the _soma_ of the Vedas (the earliest Hindu texts) sure sounds like mushrooms..

edit: Added last paragraph and..Ok downvoter, care to explain? Maybe you have some good reason, but it just makes me dislike HN when people downvote for apparently no reason but..well, who knows.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross)

[1] I read about that in Scientific American 20ish years ago. Some interesting leads here: [http://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20american%20santa...](http://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20american%20santa%20claus%20mushroom)

<comment><USER16> You might want to check out the Philip K Dick book "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer"

<comment><USER5> Thank you, I will, downloaded it already. I've not read much PKD at all, but read some of his VALIS writings after seeing _A Scanner Darkly_ and _Radio Free Albemuth_ , which both seem about 80-90% autobiographical. _Radio Free Albemuth_ strongly reminded me of the amazing movie _Equus_ (1977), also (you could say) about the founder of a religion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _tl;dr_ \- During (on the eve of) the decline of The Soviet Union, a trustworthy news magazine program on state-sponsored television, hosts a performance artist for a segment of his choosing, in which he spouts absurdities and nonsense. During the segment, the performance artist deadpans details of Lenin consuming psychedelic mushrooms in quantities which ultimately transform Lenin (somehow). Everybody laughs.

Not exactly a hoax, but more a wink and a nod at the bastardization of the media apparatus of a totalitarian state that is soon to be replaced, and thus no longer requires donning the pomp and circumstance of official government communications.

</comment><comment><USER18> Russian rulers are pretty strange. Another couple of facts you probably didn't know: Putin is crab and Medvedev is a bumblebee.

For Medvedev it's pretty simple: in his young years he sang on a party popular song "Woolly bumblebee" from a popular movie and told that to journalists. That was probably the most interesting part of interview and search engines got flooded with queries like "Medvedev bumblebee". So the phrase became viral and now everybody is aware of his true nature :)

For Putin it's even funnier: he told the journalists that during his presidency he works as a slave on a galley. In Russian words "slave" and "crab" are pretty close: "rab" and "crab". And the word "as" contains the first letter from "crab". So there was a typo in the newspaper stating that Putin works as crab on galley: "как раб на галере" > "как краб на галере".

<comment><USER19> Reminds me of the Chinese anti-censorship memes of the grass mud horse, and river crabs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse)

<comment><USER20> Ever heard of "Winnie-the-Pooh" [0] and "The Toad" [1]? It seems having some memes referring to the head-of-state is a common pattern in countries with authoritarian governments, since calling them directly by names is, at least, uncomfortable.

[0] [https://www.vox.com/2018/8/4/17651630/christopher-robin- bann...](https://www.vox.com/2018/8/4/17651630/christopher-robin-banned-in- china-pooh)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moha_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moha_culture)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A discussion from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839)

<comment><USER22> Another related one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Haven't you heard?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQR- oI5PjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQR-oI5PjI)

</comment><comment><USER15> First of all, Kuryokhin was a brilliant musician for his time and one of the few Russians known in the Western experimental-jazz scene, he played in at least one concert with John Zorn and Bill Laswell (with Valentina Ponomareva as the frontwoman). There's a great excerpt from a TV show where complaints thrown at his band are so typical and predictable they're laughable (it's in Russian though): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJTAhNhaaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJTAhNhaaY)

But also, his bullshitting skills are unparalleled, you literally never know if he's saying something he believes. There are sort-of "behind the scenes" clips for the absurdist movie 'Two Captains 2'—where he as an actor, and the director Sergey Debizhev talk to different reporters by making up each their own plot on the spot. There's a 40-minute TV interview where the interviewer admits he doesn't know if a single true thing was said. In the second clip from the OP article you can see how both Kuryokhin and Sholokhov had trouble holding in the laughter while recording their "talk," and that's just a part of the full video.

The thing about late 80s–early 90s Russian media and arts scene is, it was "anything goes," a period of braindump after the suffocating atmosphere of the USSR. (I barely caught the end of the time of change in the late 90s, and still the influx of modern arts was like enlightenment and nirvana after both stale Soviet standards and the sugary shitshow of the local pop music).

In this scene, a lot of talented people just did weirdest things they could with the extremely low budgets, because the old rules were thrown away, and no new ones were made yet. Sex, blood, shit, you name it, we had a lot of that, mostly in abominable taste and quality. There are plenty of bands of varying degree of absurdism from that era: Nogu Svelo, NOM, GrOb, Mango-Mango, the parody of Boney Nem, etc. Pranksters and jesters became important in all forms of media since they were showing people that life could, and probably should, be a lot different. Kuryokhin worked closely with the gang of the Leningrad "rock club," but I'd say he was sorta ahead of them, being in free jazz and modern-classical music and known in the West (playing on one stage with Zorn in '91, come on).

A repetition of that experience is impossible unless we have another go with the Iron Curtain. In the past thirty years, media and show business here have settled a lot just like they did in the West, disregarding even the whole oppression stuff. Now there are things that you can do to get any kind of known, and making an absurdist band is not really one of them. (Though the post-indie antifolk wave from ~five years ago was pretty good.) For my taste, we're in dire need of fresh big time satire that cuts deep and hurts a lot.

Bonus track: "a true renaissance of shit" that is more familiar to the Western audience, courtesy of Poorly Drawn Lines: [http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/](http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/)

<comment><USER24> He has a record with Henry Kaiser as well.

GrOb started in early 80-s though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I lived in Russia, I knew one promising youngster who unfortunately chose to "come to the dark side." He himself was a hardcore marxist, but nevertheless went on to develop himself as "political technologist," offering his services to anybody ready to dish out a sum.

The two quotes from him I remember to this day: "with enough time and money, I can make a city to vote even for a devil himself," and second "people believe in whatever is easiest to believe, the bydlo did once believe that the earth was flat after all"

<comment><USER25> _the bydlo_

As in _cattle_? Charming man.

<comment><USER11> Bydlo is Ukrainian word and it literally means "cattle". It can be used also to describe somebody, who will eat his food and do his job slowly and silently, withstanding any tortures, and doing nothing to help himself or to help others.

Russians picked up this word recently and use it as synonym for "redneck", often used as label for Ukrainians.

In this case, it means more like "redneck".

<comment><USER26> I am sorry, but you are factually wrong.

The word bydlo was borrowed into Russian (from Ukrainian, which in turn got it from Polish) a very long time ago, and has been used in works of Russian literature (Aksyonov, Strugatsky brothers, Sholokhov, Kuprin) through the entire span of the 20th century, including before the revolution. According to the Russian National Corpus, the earliest usage in Russian print was in 1869.

The word and its usage has nothing to do with Ukraine, and is not used as a epithet for Ukrainians or any other particular ethnicity - unless talking about specific Ukrainians (or Russians, or Americans, or whoever else) who act like bydlo.

EDIT: I was wrong about the etymology. Updated.

<comment><USER11> «Bydlo» has root «byt`», which mean «to live», so «bydlo» in Ukrainian literally means «an animal, which lives with someone», i.e. cattle. Only Ukrainian language still have calling form of words in use, so, if this word is borrowed, it's borrowed more than 1k years ago, i.e. at times of Volyniana, kingdom of all Slavs, before kingdom was split into parts.

For us, with more than thousand years of history, few decades ago is recent history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Usually i love atlasobscura articles, but this one is very tiring to read even on the first paragraphs still.</comment>


Have coffee with Tim Cook – a charity auction - <AUTHOR> https://www.charitybuzz.com/TimCook

<comment><USER2> "The minimum processing and handling charge for this item is $9.95."

</comment><comment><USER3> I would definitely do it, if I had the dough. They probably would make more if they have Jony Ive for the bidding.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems a shame that they're using the traditional auction format, meaning only the very rich will have this opportunity.

Would have been much better if they'd offered the lottery ticket style of prizeo.com, would have bought a few tickets with the off-chance of winning then.

<comment><USER5> Why is it a shame?

I don't mean to sound snarky, but the point is to raise money for charity, so the goal is going to be to get as much money as possible. I'm not familiar with Prizeo, but I'm willing to bet it'd be tough to raise $50k+ on a lottery basis.

<comment><USER6> I think you can definitely raise $50,000 via $5-$20 lottery tickets. Of course the legality of it may make it trickier.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't specific in my post, I meant with Tim Cook specifically. And maybe with $5-20 that would be more possible, I was thinking something closer to "$1 = 1 vote" or something like that.

<comment><USER7> Another cool auction format used is this:

The last person putting $10 in the pot wins the auction. Putting $10 in the pot will postpone the end of the auction for let's say 30 minutes.

This format has been used at some of the charity auctions I visited. It was very funny... Now that I am thinking about it: Maybe it only works in real live because the moderator of the evening was very funny and motivating.

<comment><USER8> Heh, I've seen this format on one of those "You can buy an iPad for £5" not- so-charity sites my dad tried. Very very clever business model, we often saw things going for much more than you could buy them elsewhere because people were already invested. You had to be the highest bidder for some fixed amount of time instead of the Ebay model of last second sniping, genius psychological trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The bid history is interesting: <https://www.charitybuzz.com/catalog_items/337478/bids>

Looks like the current leader, rory.oneill3 has bid against himself a few times.

<comment><USER10> I think that just means that he had an automatic bid that was higher than someone else's.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Question... Would you consider, as a startupper, to invest some money (quite a lot, we are now around 15k $) in the possibility to chat with Tim Cook?

<comment><USER11> Very much, no. I would never pay $15k so talk to _anyone_.

Having people you look up to is something. This would be senseless idolatry.

<comment><USER12> It's about the charity donation. That you get coffee with Tim Cook is just bait.

I've been at charity auctions where people bid rediculous sums for rediculous items. It wasn't about getting the item, it was an excuse for giving money.

<comment><USER11> I know, and, if I had the money, I'd do the charity donation. But the parent comment asked about paying in general a large sum _to_ talk to Tim Cook in the context of being an entrepreneur. I understood the charity aspect of it wasn't to be considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like to put a bid in for Richard Stallman (Founder of GNU foundation), but I don't have the money to make that kind of minimum bid ($15,333)

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want to donate to a good cause, go donate to a good cause, you don't need Tim Cook for that.

</comment><comment><USER15> I guess this would count as an expense for someone's company account, so.. why not.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd rather donate to talk to Jonathan Blow, Tommy Refenes, Howard Schultz, Jony Ive.

Laurene Powell-Jobs would be worth more, even.....

Tim being the CEO of Apple doesn't make him valuable in this case, at least to me.

<comment><USER16> why the down vote to my comment? Others even agree Tim Cook is being used as bait and listed alternatives to whom they would rather have coffee with...</comment></comment>


HP told some to pick b/t becoming contractors witho benefit or fired witho severance - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-hp-cut-more-workers-without-severance-2015-8

<comment><USER2> Of course, in most right-to-work (right-to-fire) states this is legal. Its only immoral.

Where I used to contract, they did layoffs the week before Christmas. Year after year. That actually rose to the level of 'evil'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another instance of Corporate cannibalism.</comment>


The Mobility Myth (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/the-mobility-myth <comment><USER2> >Seventy per cent of people born into the bottom quintile of income distribution never make it into the middle class, and fewer than ten per cent get into the top quintile. Forty per cent are still poor as adults.

I'm unconvinced this is a terribly concerning level of mobility. Some people seem to assume an ideal level of mobility would demonstrate no advantage to those born in upper quintiles (i.e., your birth quintile plays no role in your adult quintile), but given what we know about the importance of genetics in passing along favourable human capital characteristics, matching behavior in mating markets, and the importance of social capital -- it seems very reasonable that we would see less than "perfect" mobility.

<comment><USER3> > but given what we know about the importance of genetics in passing along > favourable human capital characteristics

I don't think we know that at all, and as an assumption it is a terrible one. If it is wrong (and we have no reason to assume it is correct, at least not to a very high degree), you are deciding to give up on a lot of people. You're basically _guessing_ that the poor are where they belong and as a consequence of that guess, you make no effort to help them. Moreover, even if that assumption is right, so what? Even if people are born less capable of riches, that does not mean we shouldn't do our best to help them achieve moderate levels of success, or at least to better their lot in life. This isn't all altruistic: a more egalitarian society is a more pleasant one.

In the end, it all comes to values. But I want to clarify what those values signify: financial success isn't just about how much stuff you can buy, but more importantly about power[1]. The less money you have relative to the median, the less power, and the less power you have -- the less freedom. Giving up on power equality means giving up on greater freedom to great many people.

> it seems very reasonable that we would see less than "perfect" mobility.

There's a very long way from where the US is now to perfect mobility. Americans can start with striving for European levels of mobility for a start. We know that at least that is possible.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_\(social_and_political\))

<comment><USER2> Actually there is a tremendous amount of research on the importance of genetics (particularly twin and adoption studies). My quick summary here is going to be overly simplistic, but at a very high level, so long as a child wasn't raised in an abusive environment, genetics are much more important in predicting things like intelligence and future earnings than a family's characteristics are. That conclusion is not merely anecdote. It's one of the most extensively studied questions in parenting research.

<comment><USER3> I think that your interpretation of the results is very wrong.

Studies on criminality show a significant genetic component -- not that it is the most significant factor. The IQ studies indeed show that a much stronger correlation with the biological parents, but IQ variation has not been found to be a major cause of social inequality, AFAIK. I.e. to draw your conclusions you'd need another missing element, which is to show that low IQ is a major cause of poverty, and other causes don't play as significant a role. I am not aware of any such claims. Indeed, in the famous twin-adoption studies, heredity was found to explains only ~20% of the variation in earnings in men and ~10% in women -- certainly significant, but far from being the determining cause.

Also, that genetics may have a significant influence on future earnings does not mean that no action is possible to counter that effect -- if we choose to take it. Choosing to take it or not is a value-based choice. Genetics also prevents us from flying or some people born with deformities from walking, yet we have built airplanes and prosthetics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everybody can't be rich (que incredibles quote: "if everyone's super no one will be").

So for every person who moves up, someone must move down. So here is a thought experiment, instead of thinking about improving upward mobility, rather think about improving downwards mobility. Make it difficult to occupy the top echelons, make people work for it and deserve it, instead of just inheriting a fortune and riding the advantages of passive capital working for you.

Just a thought, I have no idea where it could lead but it could perhaps provide a fresh perspective...

<comment><USER5> > So for every person who moves up, someone must move down.

Standards of living and wealth are not a zero-sum game, there are plenty of situations where changes benefit everyone.

<comment><USER4> Standards of living isn't zero sum, I agree. Wealth, or rather relative wealth or a class society is zero sum.

Again, everyone can't be rich (relative to other people), unless you want to go the direction of communism / socialism / classless society. So as a thought experiment...

PS. Why did you downvote, seriously you downvoted a thought experiment meant to stimulate thought.

<comment><USER6> Communism / socialism / classless society doesn't escape the zero-sum game you mentioned. Relative wealth is zero-sum by very definition. If everyone has exactly the same wealth, no one is richer than others.

<comment><USER4> I agree.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Theory that explains the formation of languages - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx1BHtAwYHm5Mk1xdThPTHc3Z1E/view <comment><USER2> This is fringe science. It says there are certain intrinsic sounds which are universal to all languages, and these are present in many modern words.

For example, it argues that "cop" is understandable through the following decomposition:

> cop /kɒp/ [police] - /p/ protection /kɒ/ acceptability of consciousness; > protection with acceptability of consciousness;

However, the etymology of "cop" is nothing to do with that. First, "cop" is short for "copper", which come from "to cop", meaning "to take, capture". Quoting [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cop](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cop) :

> 1704, northern British dialect, "to seize, to catch," perhaps ultimately > from Middle French caper "seize, to take," from Latin capere "to take" (see > capable); or from Dutch kapen "to take," from Old Frisian capia "to buy," > which is related to Old English ceapian (see cheap). Related: Copped; > copping.

The term "cop" is used for things besides police, such as "to steal", and used in phrases like "to cop an attitude" and "to cop a feel." These are much more closely related to "to take" than anything to do with protection.

Also, "bobby" is the UK equivalent of "cop", from the name Robert Peel. This cannot be traced back to some fundamental concept of "protection", etc.

Or consider the decomposition of "ink" from this document:

> ink /ɪ ŋk/ [a fluid for writing] - /ŋk/ lively consciousness /ɪ/ visibility; > lively consciousness invisibility; /ɪ/ दृश्यत /ŋk/ जीवंत चेतना; दृश्यत > म�जीवतं चेतना.

The normal etymology for that word, at [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ink&allowed_in_fram...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ink&allowed_in_frame=0) , goes back to the Greek "enkaiein" \- "to burn in". This has nothing to do with visibility, but rather from "the name of the purple-red ink, the sacrum encaustum, used by the Roman emperors to sign their documents; this was said to have been obtained from the ground remains of certain shellfish, formed into writing fluid by the application of fire or heat, which explained the name."

Now, there may be some sounds which trace back to a proto-human language. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto- Human_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Human_language) . But this paper comes across as a big hammer used to force everything to fit into its pattern, or at least to only pick out those words which happen to be explainable by its scheme.

Also, various African languages use click consonants. Yet this pseudo- scientific book says nothing about clicks. Either there is no phonosemantics to clicks, in which case why are they used?, or there is phonosemantics, in which case what is missing from all the languages which don't have them?

I am reminded of the line from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" \- "Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The period of evolution of languages is 30000 to 70000 years back from today, when there was no language, and humans themselves were converting from animal to human and communicating using different natural modes (including facial expression, gestures, and vocalization). Sound was one of them. The natural process of formation of words is very simple. An observer observes an object. The visuals are perceived in the form of a sequence of psychological feelings. Phonosemantics (the natural converter) provides appropriate phonemes to these different psychological feelings, and the sequence of feelings is converted into appropriate sequence of phonemes (or sounds). The sequence of those phonemes is called a word. For example, a group of people was passing through a forest. On their way, their movement was restricted by a 'pond' or a 'wet place'. The sequence of psychological feelings will be; "clarity in acceptability of restriction in moving further". According to phonosemantics, we have 'clarity' = /g/, 'acceptability' = /ɒ/, and 'restriction' = /b/. In all they named it /bɒg/ (clarity of acceptability of restriction). As on today, the phenomenon seems to be a bit difficult, because we already have a known word 'bog' for 'pond' or 'wet place'.

Formation of languages depends on the following seven factors:

(1) Phonosemantics (meaningfulness of every sound).

(2) Biological needs (geographical situation, food, act and sex)

(3) Biological availability (vocal and listening organs, environment).

(4) Psychological needs (fear, desire, loneliness, ego satisfaction etc.).

(5) Psychological availability (ego, courage, faith, religion, and social values).

(6) Intellectual needs (curiosity, purpose).

(7) Intellectual availability (education, notions).

As regards animals of the same species, the first five factors are the same. That is why "the overwhelming majority of animals are born knowing how to speak their species's language. It doesn't really matter where those animals are born or raised, because their speech seems to be mostly imprinted in their genetic code". As regards animals of different species, we have differences in factors from 2 to 5, but factor 1 (phonosemantics) remains unchanged. A goat may not understand the psychological message of a lion's roaring. But the evolution of fear cannot be denied. The evolution of fear because of roaring sound is due to phonosemantics which is applicable to all entities including a goat, a lion, and a human. As regards humans, we have differences in factors from 2 to 7, which is the reason for difference in languages.

Website: [http://soundmeanings.xyz](http://soundmeanings.xyz)</comment>


Codepanel.io $15 credits on signup, Code in cloud in faster way - <AUTHOR> https://codepanel.io?rc=crCMg== <comment><USER2> What is codepanel ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Codepanel is a Cloud IDE (more than that) in which you can add your existing servers / hosting (SSH / FTP / SFTP / GITHUB) and databases and start development without doing anything else.

codepanel also gives permission control so that you can share access of your workspaces and can track everything its really great tool. Try it once

<comment><USER2> Sounds Great, Let me try it</comment></comment></comment>


We have detected a security breach. Services are temporarily suspended - <AUTHOR> http://instawallet.org

<comment><USER3> "Online wallet services" are an invitation to theft and fraud. Do not use them. I've been saying that since July 2011 (<https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26260.0>), before MyBitcoin ran off with everyone's money, and it's just as true today as it was then.

If you lost money today I feel for you, but seriously, it's your own damn fault. A Bitcoin is only yours if it was last sent to an address that is yours, and an address is only yours if no one else knows what it is - in other words, you have to have generated it anew on a secure, malware-free computer, and avoided ever putting the wallet file on any computer that has malware or that is not yours.

Seriously, stop it, you fools.

<comment><USER4> Which is essentially saying BTC will never become more than a semi-serious play thing for the tech community. How is the non-tech user ever going to be able to use this with anywhere near level of trust/safety they do with current traditional currencies. Hell, a lot of my tech friends can't keep their computer secure/clean, not to mention backed-up, so how are Joe and Jane Average?

Or, alternatively BTC embraces the same banking industry setup it is trying to get away from.

That said, I don't disagree with what you are saying (and upvoted) - <USER2> pointing out some implications.

<comment><USER5> Those who want to trust BTC banks can do so. But now people have the choice not to trust them and instead manage their wallet themselves. You don't have that choice in the current banking system.

<comment><USER4> When I moved to the US, I spent a week+ living on cash until I had my bank account set up. Being able to buy pre-paid VISA cards for cash at retailers solves the part of the online issue as well. You can be a 'mattress' banker with cash if you wish, securing your house just like you would secure your computer.

Not sure there is _as_ big as a difference between BTC and the current as people would lead you to believe. Emphasis on _as_ since there obviously are differences - at least until new laws get thought up and passed.

<comment><USER6> > Not sure there is as big as a difference between BTC and the current as > people would lead you to believe

1) The value of your card is unlikely to be stolen by a hacker, unless you make an online purchase.

2) If someone spends the value of your card, you have recourse

3) Bitcoin is used to store much large amounts of money than you likely had on your VISA card

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Someone on bitcointalk.org [1] noticed that approximately 42,000 BTC (currently worth about US$4.3 million) was just transferred out of one of Instawallet's accounts [2]. No idea whether the transaction was Instawallet's doing, or the attacker's.

[1] [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=164143.msg1716794#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=164143.msg1716794#msg1716794)

[2] [http://blockchain.info/address/1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96...](http://blockchain.info/address/1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96KbrCy)

<comment><USER8> UH OH

Says it was sent FROM cold storage that's not a good sign.

<comment><USER9> If it's actual cold storage, then it's probably just them taking precautions. The whole point of cold storage is to make the wallet immune to a server breach. But who knows? It sounds like their security was sloppy.

<comment><USER8> Edit..

[Apr-1 10:30 CET] Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia update: Our customer's bitcoins and euros are safe and will not be affected by the security breach. We have taken the websites off-line for proper investigation.

The address 1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96KbrCy is under our exclusive control.

from <https://bitcoin-central.net/>

All is fine then I guess

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Instawallet has always only been meant to keep spare change for quick transactions. For the longest time you could type into google site:instawallet.org/w and get a list of URLs with money in them, it's not secure.

Neither is Strongcoin who had all their wallet labels leaked recently, some of which users had decided to type in the hints for their key passwords.

If I remember correctly Instawallet is a ruby/rails app run by the same people who do Bitcoin-Central.net. If you look at their other app Instawire you see lot's of ruby gems used, in a financial application, not good.

EDIT.. bitcoin-central.net is also down

<comment><USER10> it looks like they fixed the /w issue with google but it stil shows up in other search engines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big believer in the future of bitcoin and hold a significant amount. However I find holding bitcoin terrifying. There is just so much that can go wrong - from data loss, to personal tragedy, to hackers, to algorithmic weaknesses.

Ultimately we probably need insured, trusted third parties to hold keys, such that even if there is a breach, someone financially viable is on the line to reimburse.

Individuals holding their own keys may be a nice dream, but its highly impractical for most people if they have a significant portion of their wealth in bitcoin. Certainly there will be very high net worth people and security maniacs who want to hold their own keys, but I believe most people will want a third party to guarantee them.

<comment><USER8> If you hold a lot of coins you simply print out the keys and keep them in a safety deposit box in a bank. Problem solved

Or use the Armory offline wallet to store them on an encrypted non-networked storage, print the keys, do the above.

<comment><USER11> Don't you also need to destroy all other records of those keys?

<comment><USER8> Only if you don't trust the encryption on your cold wallet backup where you generated the keys. Personally I'd keep both, encrypted drive and printed keys then if say the bank is robbed or burns to the ground you can still transfer the coins.

You'd want to also make sure the printer isn't storing memory of those keys that were printed.

Some weird startup out of Europe is splitting up $2mil worth of coins on 3 USB encrypted sticks, using Shamir's secret sharing as the master key to decrypt (this according to Bitcoin magazine). Sounds like a bad idea I don't trust wear leveling drives that could fail taking all your coins with them

<comment><USER12> You can make Shamir's secret sharing redundant if you are worried about that.

You could make say, 6 USB drives, any 3 which can recovery your wallet. As long as no more than -half- fail you would then be fine. And you can set either number as high or low as you like, of course.

And it's not like wear leveling should come in to play if you aren't actually writing to them.

<comment><USER6> You guys are making my point. You are speaking a language most people don't begin to want to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If this is an April Fool's joke, it is likely to backfire significantly!

<comment><USER14> There needs to be a protocol for "this is definitely 100% not an April Fool's joke."

<comment><USER15> Any financial sites should not participate in April Fool's jokes if you ask me, or just as google add a notice it's for just a joke.

<https://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/nose/help.html>

<comment><USER16> You mean they're not shutting down YouTube after the contest is over?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bitcoin rules:

1\. Keep your own self-generated, backupable and recoverable wallet without dependency on any third party babysitting services that are being consistently broken into (and your money is lost). Electrum wallet is recommended as it also allows you to export "master public key" using which you may launch your own online store business and accept bitcoins as a payment without risk of losing money if someone hacks your online store.

2\. Use third party service only for buying and selling bitcoins. As soon as transaction is complete - transfer bitcoins back to your own wallet.

3\. Have a will so your loved one could get a hold of coins. Just in case.

<comment><USER8> Yes Electrum is good but remember you're relying on somebody else's blockchain instead of your own. Though I generally trust the Electrum blockchain servers you never know.

Your online store key, you should be using some sort of script to generate receive payment addresses offline and stick those in a db. The payments should go to a cold wallet you can either with a serial cable send a txn or manually enter the signed transactions, but that's just my paranoid security

<comment><USER17> The beauty of electrum master public key is that it can be used to generate unlimited number of "receive only" bitcoin addresses. Server script could do it for each sale. If someone hacks into server - he can't steal anything, because Electrum's master private key (to send money) never stored in server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The server appears to no longer be responding. That would appear to indicate a non-April fools joke (coupled with the fact that they shouldn't really be pulling pranks in the first place).

edit : back online

</comment><comment><USER19> There is this from a few days ago: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159673.0>

The founder said it was fixed but who knows

</comment><comment><USER15> Though I like seeing sites pulling an April Fool's joke, I do think any money- related sites (so bitcoin sites as well) have to say no to pulling pranks on their users.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm pretty certain it's not a joke.

If it is, it's obvious that the instawallet guys have no business handling your money.

<comment><USER21> Whereas, if they were just hacked, that's a great sign for handling your money?

<comment><USER20> Either way it's a bad sign. At least with disaster response they show they're taking things seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ...I can't imagine a financial company would ever actually take down their main site and claim to have been compromised just as a joke. For one thing, it's not even funny, so where's the joke? And second, it's obviously really bad for business. I think it's safe to assume this is real.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that instawallet goes down on the day the BTC:USD hits 106 on Mt. Gox

<comment><USER24> I am not a financial guy - just a web programmer - why is this interesting, please?

<comment><USER25> If Bitcoins are worth more, criminals are probably willing to work harder to steal them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If it is an April fools joke, it's a terrible one. They should have been more creative. As it is, they're just destroying the trust in their brand. Nothing funny about it.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is working/has worked on porn sites? - <AUTHOR> And where do people doing this hang out? I've been quietly working on something that's taking off but I'm on my own here. <comment><USER2> I worked in porn years ago... ah the memories. I worked for one of the first companies doing live interactive video streaming from girls living at home, though "live" in the late 90's was a still image every 1-2 seconds and no audio. The girls were rolling full sized PCs with camcorders around on rolling carts in their houses. I learned a lot about managing high traffic, server push methods, etc. I know I came out of it with a lot of things I wouldn't have picked up elsewhere. I never found it to be a hindrance to getting work later.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was the Director of Technology for Naughty America up until about 7 months ago when I transitioned to a "mainstream" job as those in the industry call it. Was definitely an interesting experience, but as others have said the things you learn about massive traffic, high availability, scalability and TONS of streaming video are hard to get anywhere else, unless you're working for a Google or Yahoo. Naughty America at one point was in the top 800 highest trafficked of all sites on the web, 1M+ uniques a day. I'm now the CTO of a startup and when I was leaving Naughty America everyone I interviewed with viewed that experience as an asset, as most intelligent people will.

www.gfy.com is the most popular adult webmaster forum, but there are others like www.justblowme.com, www.adultwhoswho.com, etc

</comment><comment><USER4> Funny, these AHN's come up every few months or so. I wrote a good portion of the code and architecture for the kink.com sites. Decided to leave after 4 years working there pretty much because my job there was done, things work really well. Despite what people might think, it was not hard at all to find a 'real' job again as my experience working in extremely high traffic environments is desirable.

<comment><USER5> Cool. I've been a member of the Kink site in the past and found it to be fast and well done. Did you just work on the back end stuff or did you also work on the design/layout of the site as well?

<comment><USER4> I did the backend stuff, but wrote a lot of the jsp pages as well. It is all Java/J2EE/JBoss/EJB3/Hibernate with some fairly complicated single sign on stuff going on to allow cross domain auto-login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work for Gamma Entertainment up here in Montreal. I handle the credit card processing side of things (TrustCharge). I won't rehash the places I've mentioned in other comments, but don't neglect actually meeting people. The trade shows are a great place to meet people, even if you don't get a booth.

Just keep in mind that the adult business is a _business_. The people involved are interested in making money.

On a side note, we are hiring programmers! Shoot me off an email if you're interested.

<comment><USER7> Nice. You're about to start doing payment processing (among other things) for Hot House, my best client. Seeing you here gives me great confidence!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On the topic of getting a new job after leaving the adult industry:

It will generally have little impact on future jobs; especially if you get hands on experience with massively scalable architectures and high traffic volumes. The problems you solve outweigh the environment you worked in. From my experience, adult companies keep things professional due to the nature of the business and the risks of being sued.

I have a buddy that was in the industry for awhile, and there are a number of forums they all troll on. Here's a couple:

<http://iq69.com> <http://gfy.com> (nsfw)

</comment><comment><USER9> So for those of you that have worked on porn sites- why are they generally so poorly done (or at least, from the perspective that most HN coders would view as poorly).

Many have parts that are broken, they are slow, have really messy HTML, rely super heavily on flash, and just lack most modern features that most sites would have.

I've been dreaming of 'porn for geeks', where the content is the same, but there's nice RSS feeds, everything has strong semantic meaning, HTML5 is everywhere, they use jquery for consistent javascript rendering, the pages scale properly when you size them up, and hell... maybe even try for some user accessibility.

I just have yet to run across a good porn site that looks technically as impressive as someone's 4 hour rails project even. Of course, I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.

<comment><USER10> When working for Naughty America, I made a website for the members' area that was attempting to be like hulu for porn. Queueing, favorites, recommendations, subscriptions. We had it ready to go...

Naughty America was very resistant to change. The didn't want to divert all their members to a new site. They continued to work on their old members area so I was always feature chasing.

What it comes down to is that porn companies are not set up to be tech companies. They start out with 1 hacker that throws together some shitty CMS site and starts hacking content into it. Since the site quality isn't driving the money, they never lose the "one guy hacking on the site" mentality. They were basically doing everything as a one-off, without actually trying to make a good quality solution that would serve them long term.

<comment><USER11> Is this (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176038>) the guy who wouldn't let you put up the new site? I'm fascinated to hear a dialogue on it, if so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always wondered if sysadmin work for adult sites was a niche due to moral objections or the perception that employment at a "normal" place would be difficult afterwards. I don't often see many admin job postings for such sites, so I assume the industry is somewhat incestuous (no pun intended) and/or nepotist, resulting in more word-of-mouth job prospects than through the usual channels. Discretion and all that.

Anyone know where a freelance admin could find such jobs? The smaller the shop, the better.

<comment><USER13> When I got my job in the porn industry they didn't advertise that was what it was for. Instead it was brought up during the interview process.

They asked me a series of questions related to it as well. Like "For your day job you may have to visit bigblackcocks.com to make sure their website is functioning again, how do you feel about that?" and "We host a lot of content that might be offensive, if given root access would feel the urge to delete everything because it didn't fit in with your world view?"

I'm not offended at anything, so it really didn't bother me. I worked on many different aspects of the business. Massively scaling MySQL, handling DDoS attacks, setting up load balancers on the fly, helping figure out how certain websites were attacked and or compromised. It was a fun job, and one of the sites I worked on currently has 600+ live models streaming to over 1 million unique IP addresses.

I don't know how you'd go about finding such a job, I stumbled upon it. No, it is not on my resume since I am a software engineer at heart and not a sys admin, but the knowledge I have gained has allowed me to engineer various different systems in the mean time.

CCBill and Cave Creek located in Phoenix are two of the places where I interviewed before landing the other job, later I found out through a friend who did get the job at Cave Creek that he was doing the same stuff I was doing.

<comment><USER14> You just wonder whether they _had_ hired somebody as an admin and they deleted everything... Once bitten, twice shy?

<comment><USER13> It happened while I worked there. It was a site that featured 18 year old girls that looked like they were underage. It was the guys third week on the job and while he had no issues with bestiality or anything along those lines he felt that a line had been crossed with hosting "child porn" even-though we had the records on file that said the women were all over the age of 18.

There is a reason we kept backups, and why the new guys (myself included in the first 4 months) were only allowed access on load-balanced systems so that if we did go rogue the downtime would be minimal while the more senior admins flipped a switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related to this, I'd love to see developers who work on porn sites speaking at conferences, to hear about your particular experiences in design, marketing, SEO, hosting, and scaling. Seems like you'd have an interesting perspective on all that.

<comment><USER16> I always got the impression most tech conferences were too thin-skinned about the subject, which is sad considering the porn industry works on a lot of interesting tech problems.

<comment><USER17> There was one talk called "Tits Bits" at the Chaos Communication Camp 07 (a rather unconventional but awesome tech conference). It was about the technical challenges of operating a porn streaming website. You can download the recording (number 2041) here: <http://dewy.fem.tu- ilmenau.de/CCC/CCCamp07/video/m4v/>

The recording includes some pictures which make it not safe for work (depending on your work environment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Probably should create a throwaway for this :) but way back in college I did a bit of contract front-end web work for some guys in that area, email me (in profile) and I can send you the URL of the message board they were all on.

<comment><USER19> Do you need a secret handshake or something?

<comment><USER18> No, just didn't want to post gofuckyourself.com here, but others already did so why not :D

But speaking of secret handshakes, don't suppose anyone here remembers CFUS by any chance?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to be the R&D Director at Naughty America, here's what I built:

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/come-and-get-it-naughty- ame...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/come-and-get-it-naughty-america-is- building-an-itunes-for-porn/)

<http://gofuckyourself.com> (NWS) is pretty much the hangout for adult affiliates and webmasters. If you're trying to build traffic, that's where you want to be.

Funny enough, I seem to be at it again. My latest client is a porn startup.

<comment><USER21> What does the startup do?

<comment><USER20> Nothing fancy, just a new porn studio. After the basic stuff is up and running we're going to talk about making it all whiz-bang.

I still have dreams about getting the "iTunes Store for Porn" idea up and running again, since there was a lot of interest from other companies about getting their content on there (I think it's the best way to save the industry from the proliferation of free porn). Plus, with the technical/marketing/mobile knowledge I've gained since then I can make it a million times better.

Unfortunately, without the content and resources of Naughty America behind me it would be tough to break away from client work long enough to build something that I could pimp out to content producers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My experience with the domain has been less than stellar. I ended up being fired for handing over a petition from all but one employee asking for better treatment. I sued them and they settled out of court.

The best part of it was the "best orgasm faces" contest we had. I was a programmer so I just benefited from it but those working on touch ups would screenshot and save the orgasm faces into a shared network drive and we had new stuff to laugh at every day.

</comment><comment><USER23> Long long long time ago back in the days of dial up ISPs, I along with friends created a website called Kandyland. We bought a negative film scanner for about $1500 or so for a photographer in return for a 2 year supply of naked women photos.

About 4 months later we got a cease and deist letter from Hasbro asking us not to use the term Kandyland as it was too similar to Candyland the game.

Being young and not exactly flush with VC money, we simply changed it to California Babes or something like that.

Eventually after about one and half years, our girlfriends asked us if we are going to make this a career or not? We picked our girlfriends and have left the business altogether. The experience did help my web development career though.

Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER14> I did a bunch of work for a porn site back in the 90's who somehow managed to not pay me. Something like $6000 down the drain. (So my wife was mad at me twice over that one. Sigh.)

</comment><comment><USER24> I made <http://pix-plz.com> . I originally set out to make a site that was easier to use than hotornot.com (a lot of people just rate all photos the same, because they want to see more.)

The site has languished, as I'm not really sure what to do with it, but I'm proud of the features I implemented, the UI, and the things I learned in doing it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I worked for livejasmin (and the sister sites), some years ago, I think it was the biggest live streaming sites even back then.

Unfortunately, I wasn't a coder then, just support staff, but it was a great experience and I learnt some things about how they run a multimillion dollar biz from a basement.

Got a view on everything from creditcard processing, to the sysadmin side. And of course dealing with performers and customers was always fun, as they are not that usual people. Still remember a "crazy stuff" folder, where we used to collect the funny moments.

</comment><comment><USER26> A guy who works for the people who do Pornhub posts here: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2172382> (his comment and subsequent replies)

<comment><USER27> Yep that's me. I've been working for Manwin for the past 3 years and a half. Worked on almost every projects they've done. For the past 2 years, i've been involved specifically on the tube sites, Pornhub.com and other ones. I am currently Lead Developer, and like my job, like others stated in this thread, it's a great occasion to work on high traffic websites, solving scalability issues, and a lot of interesting stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I had a dabble a few years ago. There was a strong community on a couple of IRC channels.

I saw the potential for seriously automated stuff, but sadly when I went to Uni it all fell by the wayside. Got back into it a little after, but lost interest: it had got a lot harder to get converting traffic in the 5 years between the first dabble and later.

Now everyone wants video. That's gotta be a killer on your bandwidth bills.

</comment><comment><USER29> Personally working in the adult industry is a little awkward in the beginning but after that it's fairly rewarding. Personally I found it really useful to get the high traffic/high scalability experience. I mean you don't get too many job opportunities where you can brag about your app serving around a billion page views/day.

</comment><comment><USER30> Did some contracting on one of porn -tube sites. Also worked on lesbian "stuff" web shop. Crazy days...

</comment><comment><USER31> I work tangentially to porn in adult toys for about six years. Built an affiliate program, retail sites, wholesale sites and various other stuff. Don't really interact with developers in the business, though (outside of some time on GFY before I stopped caring).

</comment><comment><USER32> _raises hand_

E-mail me if you'd like an alpha invite.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm not kidding here, gofuckyourself.com is generally considered the most popular porn webmaster forum online. I've heard the quality has dropped in recent times though.

<comment><USER34> The quality is always dropping in recent times, at almost any forum you care to visit.

<comment><USER35> I feel a strong non-rational urge to write "hacker news is turning into reddit", and then rush off to reddit to write "reddit is turning into digg" on any-and-every thread, and so on.

<comment><USER11> After 5 or 10 steps, does that end in "/b/ is turning into hacker news"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have worked in adult for 9+ years and sold 2 sites. aebn.com / stockroom.com / domme.com etc... One of the sites i sold was called cameraphoneporn.com; sold it 8 years ago before mobile was big.

IMHO the best thing about working in adult is that you gain a good understanding of affiliates and seo / marketing / conversion rates etc... and that is information that has helped me with my mainstream clients as well.

</comment><comment> what-to-do [http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=adult+webmasters+board#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&source=hp&q=adult+webmasters+forum&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=6aaff458859385c2)

<comment><USER37> nothing to do with the post, but im just curious why there is a strange character right after 'ie=UTF-8' in the name of your link.

<comment><USER38> because the encoded url is

        http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=adult...

and the HN code that truncates long urls chopped it in the middle of &#38 so it becomes "&#3" which is telling your browser to print the ascii character 3, which it can't show properly, so it shows the character you see instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What site is it?

</comment><comment><USER40> I've done adult sites. Check out my portfolio.

<http://onomojo.com></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of game mechanics would you use?  - <AUTHOR>

If you were considering adding game mechanics to your site or blog, what features would you most want to see? If someone offered a third party solution, what would motivate you to add it to your site? <comment><USER2> Why before what.

It's usually inappropriate. For a blog, the feature I want to see is interesting or useful information presented clearly and efficiently. Adding other stuff usually just elevates the noise floor for no benefit. Ditto for unfocused writing.

The initial "why" is often "I want them to come back to my site" (often contributing to other goals like conversion). You don't need some ridiculous badge system for this. The best and first callback for a blog is good, relevant content and the promise of more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would strongly discourage this sort of thinking.

First, there are third-party "game mechanics" solutions; I think YC even funded one. Second, reposting my own comments:

"Game mechanics" is the new "Web 2.0" as far as misapplied buzzwords go, but "gamification" still comes out of "video games" and "psychology," both of which have been around longer than the web, and the web likes slapping a new term on something and thinking it invented it.

To truly take advantage of game mechanics properly, you really need to know a lot about both video games and psychology. Like anything else, you may have to design with gamification in mind from the get-go, and you'll probably get it wrong the first few times out, which means you'll need to practice (or have betas).

Instead of completely retooling your software or process or "healthcare issue," perhaps instead you can add a meta-game on top: Office Hero was a game added atop Microsoft Word by Lost Garden writer danc: <http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero> && [http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/01/ribbon-hero-turns- learning...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/01/ribbon-hero-turns-learning- office-into.html)

You'll never be able to "let's just add badges!" just like you can't "let's use gradients and glossy buttons!" to move the needle.

There's even the notion that video games and traditional UI interaction design are incompatible: IxD is about making things easy, but video games are about intentionally challenging the user. If your users aren't expecting a game, they may end up incredibly frustrated instead.

I did a workshop on adding game mechanics to an existing product (a calendar/dayplanner) and the results varied wildly. One group (Ray and Nicole) integrated social game mechanics into the application really well. Another group (Cecy and Brody) treated each mechanic as a feature, and by the end of the discussion I felt like it was "missing something." You can read the write- up of the workshop here: <http://vi.to/workshop/20100426/>

My notes include a lot of references, as well as images of the handouts and my own distillation of these principles: <http://vi.to/gmnotes>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links.

I try to stay away from the term "gamification" because of the stigma associated with it and you're right, it's the new buzz word. But as an avid gamer, I think the achievement/rewards portion of a game can be used across other mediums, like websites, to incentivize visitors and foster discovery of content. I agree that just slapping a badge on a site is a massive FAIL, but providing achievements that drive others to discover interesting content on your site or acknowledge their participation may have some merit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please elaborate on game mechanics. A point system ? Enemies on a blog site??

<comment><AUTHOR> Like point systems, achievements, leader boards, etc.</comment></comment>


The amount of images in circulation affects our ability to understand them - <AUTHOR> http://reallifemag.com/illicit-material/ <comment><USER2> It used to be that something with pretensions of brainyness like this article would be reviewed by at least one editor before publication, so they could catch the glaring grammatical error in the title.

Everyone can argue as much as they want that "if you understand what they meant it doesn't matter", and maybe they're right, but I still miss the pride in craftsmanship that writing "correctly" implied.

<comment><USER3> Non-native English speaker here. What exactly is the grammatical error in: "The amount of images in circulation affects our ability to appreciate and understand them"?

<comment><USER4> It should have read, "The number of images...".

Take a look here: [http://www.dailywritingtips.com/amount-vs- number/](http://www.dailywritingtips.com/amount-vs-number/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great read, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> "Before the Revolution, an audience was a made up of individuals who simply consumed what was projected; after the Revolution the audience became a collective, with an important role in completing what was projected"

This is hard a little much.

Please, pray tell, what would the Cuban's watch if they could actually chose what they wanted to watch, instead of being told what to watch, and how to watch it?

I understand the argument about scarcity and appreciation, and that is fair.

But: "Cuba has one of the last intact coral reefs and environmentalists are rushing to protect it; preservationists are holding conferences to discuss strategies for preserving Cuba's material culture."

So the socialists colonialists now want to keep Cubans oppressed, in their 'natural state of oppression', like fish in a bowl? For the aesthetic benefit of who?

Has anyone asked the Cubans what they prefer? I mean - if they do enjoy their state of scarcity, would they not remain so 'image frugal'.

This entire piece reeks of the ostensible benevolent totalitarianism of these kinds of systems. Very scary stuff.</comment>


Ask HN: Does your company practice daily reporting? - <AUTHOR> In our company we submit our daily work at the end of the week using Excel. I am thinking to create small app for daily reporting.
Do you think community needs yet another tool to do reports?
Does your company requires daily/weekly reports? <comment><USER2> To me, there seem to be two vectors defining the problem space. The first is a front end for the daily recording. The second is the aggregation of daily data into the Excel document: i.e. a backend.

The advantage of your situation is that there is utility for building a prototype and you have good access to the people using the frontend for feedback and iteration. Even better the decision about which backend to target first is already made.

As your situation shows, there is room in the world for at least one more reporting app. Once it is built, maybe other people outside your company will find it useful. Even if they don't at least your itch will have been scratched and your team's life will be better.

Which is a round about way of giving my random advice from the internet which is to just build something that solves the immediate problems for a few people and then decide what to do next.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Daily and weekly reports are required by managers who can't do their job properly and push down their work to subordinates. Or by ineffective higher- level management that doesn't trust employees.

I'm yet to hear about time reporting doing any good that is employed in a healthy IT business.</comment>


Chrome is more than a browser, it let you play games even offline - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=462221 <comment><AUTHOR> Found out kids are constantly playing that game when wifi was disabled so they can focus on studying for a while, Google is absolutely evil(for god sake they removed that term and slogan recently), in that it makes chrome like a game console to get kids addicted to its platform, even when they are offline.

While firefox does not do this, it has addons that copies the same idea from chrome.

Browser is a browser, not an offline game console, darn it.

<comment><USER2> Gotta admit, I never thought I'd hear someone try to spin including an offline easter egg as "being evil".

I guess you probably also think that Windows 95 was downright diabolical for including not just one, but several games that can be played instead of doing homework.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's frustrating when kids have to use browser for their homework while game is readily available all the time. kids unlike adults, is hard to focus when distractions are so easy to access, especially games.

the only way out might be a thin client environment with opera as the browser, in fact, i just downloaded opera, have not touched it for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> (2015)</comment>


Comparing Rust and C++ - <AUTHOR> http://kukuruku.co/hub/rust/comparing-rust-and-cpp <comment><USER3> It might be a good idea to compare C++ and Rust and not "C with Classes and no use of compiler options" and Rust. They do have a fair point about ugly template error messages, but the remaining issues are mostly moot: Freed memory issues can be avoided using std::unique_ptr and its siblings, lost pointers to local variables shouldn't occur when using references instead of pointers, uninitialised variables are warned against when compiling with the (hopefully standard) -Wall -Werror, implicit copy constructors can either be deleted or this particular issue can be avoided by using a unique pointer (which has no copy constructor, hence the enclosing classes' copy constructor is also deleted), I don't quite get the issue with memory overlap, which is mostly an issue of a function receiving the wrong number set of arguments for the way it is written. The bit about broken iterators is actually nice, but in this case could be avoided by handing an external function two const_iterator which then cannot be changed. I don't get the problems with "A dangerous switch" and "A broken semicolons", both seem sensible constructs and if you have bugs, you have bugs. Multithreading works as expected, except that using C++11 <thread> would probably have been nicer and one would have to explicitly make e.g. the lambda passed to std::thread mutable.

All in all, yes, Rust seems to be a nice language and in particular the template system looks somewhat more understandable, but please don't write "Comparing Rust and C++" when you're not actually using C++ but some weird mishmash of C and C++. If there are new, delete or pointer arguments in functions in your code, you're most likely doing it wrong.

<comment><USER4> > Freed memory issues can be avoided using std::unique_ptr and its siblings

You can use a std::unique_ptr after it is assigned to something else. That's basically a use after free.

> lost pointers to local variables shouldn't occur when using references > instead of pointers

Lost references to heap variables happen all the time in C++ when the target is deallocated before the reference is accessed. It's the same problem and Rust fixes it the same way.

> I don't get the problems with "A dangerous switch" and "A broken > semicolons", both seem sensible constructs

Really? Then you're being naïve or obtuse. Both are common sources of bugs in C/C++. Accidental failure to handle all inputs (common when additional inputs are added after the handling code is written) and subtle typos with major consequences (see Apple's "goto fail" bug).

The purpose of Rust is to eliminate causes of careless and accidental errors by forcing you to do things the right way every time (rather than permitting lazy code).

<comment><USER5> > You can use a std::unique_ptr after it is assigned to something else. That's > basically a use after free.

While true, you can make it throw in such scenarios.

I wouldn't be surprised if the debug builds of modern C++ compilers wouldn't do it already.

<comment> mike-cardwell Here is some example code showing the problem:

[http://pastebin.com/6wu7bcrF](http://pastebin.com/6wu7bcrF)

I compiled it using both:

      g++     -std=c++14 -Wall -Wextra -g test.cpp -o test
      clang++ -std=c++14 -Wall -Wextra -g test.cpp -o test

GCC v4.9.1 and Clang v3.5.0.

Under neither case did it supply any warnings at compile time. In both cases it segfaults when it hits the second std::cout whilst running.

<comment><USER6> Since that's undefined behavior _anything_ (including and especially things worse than a segmentation fault) could happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These biased bashes against C++ that advertise rust get somewhere between boring and annoying recently. Yes, Rust has some interesting safety features that prevent some issues that you can run into with C++ (but not all). And yes, most of us will agree that header files suck and the rust approach here is nicer. That template error message are also PITA is also well known - <USER2> on the other hand templates are different (and more powerful) than generics.

On the other hand there are still a few constructs that I'm using using often enough in C++ that have currently no sane representation in Rust and that are astonishingly never mentioned in these articles:

\- Everything that you use the friend keyword for. In Rust there is no way to access private data defined in other file (because that will automatically be another module which is also something I disagree with).

\- Most things related to inheritance and interfaces. Composition is not always a better solution and Rusts traits seem still more suited for compile- time polymorphism than to runtime polymorphism. As an example try to find the equivalent of a `shared_ptr<SomeThing> thing(new SomeThing()); shared_ptr<ISomeThing> iface = thing` in Rust. And yes, I want to be able to use both afterwards.

\- __Enabling __concurrency. Some people might disagree but I think Rust is currently mostly good at preventing multithreading issues - but not at providing good and easy ways to enable it. E.g. something like boost asio would be between hard to impossible to implement in Rust because the safety mechanisms disagree with callbacks that mutate state or Future objects (which are similar to callbacks). For some things using low-level primitives like channels (aka queues) and creating new threads might be fine, but there are also enough cases where you would prefer a simple singlethreaded eventloop.

All in all I think there are still enough areas where I think Rust still is (unfortunatly) no real alternative for C++. And as long as that's the case I think writing such biased articles isn't fair.

<comment><USER8> _These biased bashes against C++ that advertise rust get somewhere between boring and annoying recently._

The main Rust community tries to discourage Rust "zealotry." For example, on /r/rust, the rules include:

 _4\. When mentioning other languages, keep the discussion civil. No zealotry!_

Anyway, as for your other question:

 _E.g. something like boost asio would be between hard to impossible to implement in Rust because the safety mechanisms disagree with callbacks that mutate state or Future objects (which are similar to callbacks)._

I know that futures have been implemented several times in Rust, including in the standard library:

[http://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/std/sync/struct.Future.html](http://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/std/sync/struct.Future.html)

In general, multithreading primitives can be implemented using ordinary Rust libraries. Internally, these libraries use _unsafe_ to do low-level threading work, but externally, they provide a safe API. The library author takes responsibility proving that their design is, in fact, thread safe.

If you know of specific boost asio features that can't actually be implemented safely in Rust, I'd love to know about them. I know that various people want to work on async I/O libraries for Rust after 1.0, and it would be nice to know about any major obstacles in advance.

<comment><USER7> Regarding the futures:

These are futures that you only can synchronously wait on (like what is currently available as std::future). However there is no possibilty to attach continuations that run when the value of the future is available. E.g. like the C++17 concurrency proposals, C#'s `Task` type or Javas `CompletableFuture`. These all rely on storing some kind of callback or closure inside the Future. That's not easy in Rust because it leads to situations where ownership is no longer obvious. The continuation might need to capture objects that are still needed locally (so you need something similar to Rc<RefMut<SomeThing>> ). In the most simply example's the continuation needs a mutable reference to the Future itself whereas the Future-producing operation also has one. And if you have possibilities that the continuation could run on another thread/executor than the calling thread (which is possible with the other languages) things get more complicated.

Regarding asio. You don't have to deep dive very much here: Simply consider boost::asio::async_write(socket, buffer, [](error_code, bytes_transferred) { /* Do something with the result */ });

You need some mutable objects (like socket or the object that contains socket) locally AND you need acccess to them in your continuation. This will only work "safely" with garbage-collected or ref-counted types and these do still not seem to work for interfaces.

<comment><USER8> _This will only work "safely" with garbage-collected or ref-counted types and these do still not seem to work for interfaces._

I'm not quite sure if I understand the problem you're describing. I can definitely share mutable objects between threads, and I can do so using abstract traits (aka "interfaces"). Here's an example:

[https://gist.github.com/emk/acdf3ab9c79ba1abe6d2](https://gist.github.com/emk/acdf3ab9c79ba1abe6d2)

I had to use a "box" here, because that's the easiest way to store objects of varying size that implement a specific interface. Experienced Rust developers may be able to simplify this a bit.

Is this what you were thinking about? Or did you mean something else?

<comment><USER7> The part that your example is missing is that one side uses the trait object ( _Common_ ) whereas the other side uses the "normal" type ( _Foo_ or _Bar_ ) or another trait object view of the object. And the be able to cast between such "smart-boxed" types after you acquired one of them.

See the disucssion a little bit below for examples with _Rc_ (it's the same problem but within a thread instead of between threads).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've flagged this because not only is it an unfair characterization of C++, it's also using a version of Rust that is six months out of date.

As a Rust fan, I don't think we need to resort to cheap shots. The language stands well enough on its own; misinformation and propaganda pieces won't get us anywhere.

<comment><USER10> If anything, the Rust community seems more concerned with only showing the good sides of its community than it is with only showing the good sides of Rust. That of course has its social/"political" advantages.

<comment><USER9> I see this as a technical advantage, not a political one. I want the language to be legitimately great, which means that we need to encourage an atmosphere where people feel welcome to express informed and constructive criticism. Breathless praise is surely kind, but it doesn't really advance the conversation. In other words: I already know that the language is good; I want you to tell me how it could be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Raw pointers is a bad example to compare to Rust. It's more like comparing C to it. If anything one should compare managed pointers like std::shared_ptr and etc, especially since the author mentions C++11.

<comment><USER12> Also failed to use std::thread and its related synchronization primitives.

And nobody who's been writing C or C++ for more than five minutes would actually make that mistake with a switch statement (omitting breaks). On the contrary, its fall-through behavior is often very convenient.

<comment><USER13> I missed a break in a switch a few weeks ago. I have been programming in C++ for more than a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Comparing languages with constraints which were laid in bedrock 30 years apart is fairly uninteresting. C++ is constrained by its compatibility with C, and always will be. Even C++17, which will be the biggest shift in the language ever, won't change this.

I see very little evidence that most programmers actually care about the advantages Rust _the language_ , as specified today, brings. I'd contest that these days the biggest reason competing languages like Go, Rust, Python, PHP and Java often trump C++ is less to do with the language, and more to do with these languages having sizeable and fairly decent standard libraries. Programmers want to get shit done.

The C++ standard library is _tiny_ and has seen fairly paltry growth over the years, with only modest introductions in C++11 of things like regex and threads. If a set of filesystem, HTTP, networking, and serialization libraries were part of the standard, and well implemented, we may well see a different landscape.

<comment><USER15> It's tricky and there is no one-language-to-rule-them-all because they have up- and downsides.

C++ has the advantage of an incredible amount of code written in over the years that mostly works. It also executes fast. It's also easy to find developers for it. With the new addons to the specification it's even possible to write readable code with it.. However, it has a stupidly long, verbose and feature creepy standard (well over 1000 pages), which results in no developer reading it. Because of it's design, compilation times tend to take long (as a ridiculous amount of headers are included even in the most simple applications).

Go is pretty much the opposite. It has a lean and readable spec (on purpose) and a fairly common canonical syntax without much discussion about it. Because it's relatively new, there is not much written in it however. It has some specific strengths, like a concurrency implementation that abstracts most of the process/thread/mutex stuff. With this, it does appeal to new projects that don't depend on libraries written in other languages. There is no point in porting multi-million SLOC applications to Go though, as that would be incredibly time-consuming. It has the potential to surpass C++ in a few decades though, as it operates in the same domain (systems programming).

Python is a versatile scripting language. It has nice syntax and is incredibly flexible at manipulating data. Add to it the well documented, feature-rich standard library. With it you can evaluate data with incredible flexibility and it has a fairly complete feature set for general programming tasks that span multiple OSs. The downside is that it's slow in execution and needs the interpreter along the scripts. Especially for smaller tasks and simple automation it is the first choice however because of it's small footprint in constraints (you can just edit and drop a scriptfile anywhere on a Linux system and it works).

Java.. I'm not entirely sure what Java does well. I hear praise for the JVM, but generally I get the impression that it is plagued by legal issues, alien looking GUI tools, more than verbose syntax and it also has a stupidly long specification (almost half of C++'s). Maybe someone can shed light on this one. Tools maybe?

<comment><USER14> The C++ language specification is only ~450 pages, the rest of the ~1200 or so pages is the standard library specification.

> Java.. I'm not entirely sure what Java does well.

* Package/module system is dead "drop your JAR here" simple.

* Humongous standard library.

* Oracle provide a really powerful free JIT (probably still one of best for real world performance when it comes to JITing static languages)

* Standardised language specification (like C and C++)

* A well specified, really simple bytecode that other compilers and runtimes can target.

* It's a newbie friendly, procedural, object-oriented language that encourages 'patterns' that make developers feel comfortable and that they know how to tackle problems (whether it's the right way is another matter)

* Relatively safe, meaning there is less to learn (no pointers, memory management, arithmetic overflow etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I love what Rust is trying to achieve and hate the many, many issues C++ has, this reads like a blatant propaganda piece.

It's not comparing C++ with Rust, or at least not fairly. It's just listing the problems of C++ that Rust is trying to solve. Someone well versed in C++ could easily write an article with the same title and list a dozen reasons why C++ is superior.

<comment><USER17> It's not meant to be fair. Rust is created as a successor of C++ to completely overtake it everywhere.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but everyone knows that it won't do that, and anyone who doesn't have brain freeze from the Rust Kool Aid understands that in programming languages, it's never so clear cut.

I realize that Rust was designed to address the issues with existing systems programming languages, but surely it has flaws, tradeoffs and small annoyances, like every other programming language.

I really like Rust and see the value in what they are trying to achieve, but I'm realistic enough that it won't be perfect.

<comment><USER18> > surely it has flaws, tradeoffs and small annoyances, like every other > programming language.

Rust core team member here: it absolutely does. Rust is _far_ from perfect, as much as I love it. Anyone who tells you Rust has no flaws is lying.

<comment><USER19> Can you describe in few words which flaws do you see in rust?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the main problems of C++ is that programmers treat it as C with classes because that's what it feels like at the surface. They think they know it because it feels like C and many decide not to learn its patterns and details. From the examples given, it's clear that the author is not very familiar with C++ and is also comparing Rust to C++98 which is not fair. C++11 is almost a new language.

</comment><comment><USER21> How does Rust handle multiple object files and dynamic linking? It seems to me that pretty much all of these guarantees break down if the compiler can't see the source code for the whole program at once.

<comment><USER22> All the information needed to make these guarantees is the type information of all visible items in a translation unit ("crate").

<comment><USER21> I'm skeptical. Did they really make the type information stored in the ABI _that_ advanced? Storing that kind of information outside of name mangling is a nontrivial feat (i.e. they'd need to rewrite the linker) and there's not a whole lot of information you can pack into name mangling.

<comment><USER22> It basically generates a header file from the source code and then stores it alongside the object data containing the type information of all public items.

<comment><USER21> So there's no run-time dynamic linking? Or is it possible, but only with additional metadata files present? Or maybe the assumptions are statically verified according to the interface and it is assumed that they are never broken by clients?

<comment><USER23> The last one. Types are stored as metadata in the object files, those types are verified at build time, and then assumed correct at run time.

<comment><USER21> Gotcha, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd actually much rather read the opposite article: things that C++ excels at that Rust falls down on. I'm not an expert, but I think there's still allocation use cases C++ is better at.

<comment><USER25> Off the top of my head:

* C++ has more robust compile-time meta-programming facilities, at least for the time being.

* C++ can generally include C (well, C89) code as-is with no translation layer. Rust's FFI is pretty inoffensive, but it's more work than a #include

* It's easier to do the really dangerous stuff if you have a good reason to. You _can_ actually call push_back on a std::vector without invalidating your iterators if you're careful. I've never seen it used properly in production code, but it's possible. At any rate, it might be more awkward to write equivalent code in Rust. Then again, maybe a deque is better than a vector for this use case, in which case I suspect that Rust is capable of a more optimal solution than push_back or std::back_inserter.

<comment><USER18> C++ can also easily bind to libraries written in C++, while Rust cannot.

(those libraries need to expose a C interface for Rust to be able to)

<comment><USER25> That's true, though I blame C++ for its lack of a standard ABI more than I would blame Rust. Not that that helps if you're just trying to get work done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Rust looks really promising. Unfortunately, the tooling just isn't there yet, it seems. Release a working plug-in for YouCompleteMe and I will switch overnight ☺

<comment><USER18> It's true that Rust's tooling is lacking, but if you're just looking for autocomplete for vim, [https://github.com/phildawes/racer#vim- integration](https://github.com/phildawes/racer#vim-integration) exists. I haven't tried it myself, but I hear good things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does UB enabling code optimization? The 'dangerous switch' might run faster if the compile deduces that only two of the possibilities are valid?

</comment><comment><USER28> If I understood correctly, it is not possible to manually manage memory in Rust and do things like memory recycling or pools?

<comment><USER29> No, you can do that, and can do so safely (if you implemented the unsafe parts correctly, at least). For example, here's an arena allocator crate: [http://doc.rust-lang.org/arena/](http://doc.rust-lang.org/arena/)

<comment><USER30> >No, you can do that, and can do so safely (if you implemented the unsafe parts correctly, at least).

That is equally true of C++; you're completely safe as long as you don't make any mistakes.

<comment><USER29> The entire C++ language is an unsafe block. I think you're trying to be funny, but you missed the point.

A concrete example of safety is that Rust can tell you if you reference memory from an arena after the arena goes out of scope. C++ can not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The one thing I don't like about Rust is the implicit return. Looking at code, it's easier to spot a missing/extra "return" than a missing/extra ";".

<comment><USER10> If you put an "extra" (unintended) semicolon on the last expression, the function will return Void/Unit: if this doesn't agree with the given type of the function, then there will be a compiler error. If you forget a semicolon, then the type of the function will become the type of the last expression, which will again make the compile complain.

Are there other issues that you had in mind?

<comment><USER31> The C++ will complain as well, the issue is ";" is 6 times less characters than "return" and so, easier to overlook.

<comment><USER10> I think I'd rather have that problem than this problem:

        if (cond); //oops, a semicolon
            alwaysHappens();

, thank you very much.</comment></comment></comment></comment>